TEL AVIV (Dow Jones) -- ECI Telecom Ltd. (NASDAQ-NMS:ECIL) , the Petach Tikva, Israel, producer of telecommunications-network solutions, said it was in talks under which it could be acquired for $10 a share.
The company (ECIL) said it was in talks with an investor group led by a firm controlled by Shaul Shani.
The company said it couldn't give any assurance that a deal would be done.
ECI shares closed Friday at $8.92, up 33 cents, or 3.8%. In the past year, the stock traded as low as $6.05 last July and as high as $9.49 in October.
At March 31, ECI reported 121 million fully diluted shares outstanding. The $ 10 price would value the shares at $1.21 billion.
ECI, which was founded in 1961 and went public in 1982, is held 28% by Koor Industries (NYSE:KOR) , (KOR) the Tel Aviv holding company.
Koor said in a separate statement that if the deal for ECI were to go through at the $10 price, it would post a capital gain of about 598 million shekels ($ 143.2 million).
In May, ECI reported first-quarter earnings jumped to $18.7 million, or 15 cents a share, from $3.1 million, or 3 cents, in the year-earlier period. Revenue fell 4.3% to $155.1 million.
And in April, Veraz Networks (NASDAQ-NMS:VRAZ) , (VRAZ) a San Jose, Calif., producer of equipment for Internet-based telephone calling, went public.
ECI said in its first-quarter-earnings news release that it expected to report about $40 million of gains on the IPO. At that point, ECI still held 23% of Veraz.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires 06-17-07 1943 Copyright (c) 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
